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18 August 2017

Cross-pollination... Some of us who use a Filofax have used a different kind of planner either in the past or at the same time. Perhaps a bullet journal, a Franklin Covey system, a bunch of small Travelers-style notebooks, or even a stack of index cards.

Have you ever adapted something you learned from a different system and used it in your Filofax? For example, do you do bullet journaling, but keep the pages in your Filofax? Did you read Stephen Covey's book and then use his ideas in your Filofax instead of buying a Covey planner? Do you use your Filofax as a commonplace book? Do you use a pocket-size Filofax for "index cards"? (I do!)

And as always on Fridays, feel free to discuss anything ring-binder related. Have a great weekend!

17 August 2017

Pocket size organisers are still very popular. For a lot of people they are a very convenient size of organiser.

The paper size is 120mm by 81mm which falls somewhere between A7 and A6. The organisers all have 6 rings each spaced 19mm apart. I'm not aware of any other configuration in this size apart from the older 4 ring pockets, see this post for those.

The rings sizes vary considerably with the range of sizes between 11mm and 20mm, we will cover who sells what size in a moment.

I think pocket size is a compromise between the super small Mini and the regular Personal size, it still gives you a usable page size in a size of organiser that will easily fit a small bag or normal size coat pocket.

Naturally the internal layouts vary quite a lot on Pocket size organisers. Some for instance have the full width back pocket, some don't. This can be very useful if you are using the organiser as a wallet as well as your planner. [Video link]

The Filofax Malden Pocket does have the full width back pocket as well as 19mm rings.

Internally it also has a useful zip pocket which can be used for coins. The Pocket size is taller than the width of a normal credit card, so you might be happier to use a Credit Card insert to hold your cards more securely.

The Filofax Holborn has the full width back pocket and 15mm rings

Internally it has an excellent layout with correct size vertical card slots. The zip pocket is tucked away in the back cover which isn't so easy to access in a hurry!

The Filofax Chameleon is unusual in that the pen loop is on the inside front cover. But this means it is out of the way of the zip pocket in the rear cover.

It also has a reasonable number of vertical card slots and 15mm rings.

The Eton Pocket is one of my favourites just for its luxury in them cramming in as many features as possible! The leather on this model is super soft and delicate!

There is no full width back pocket on this model, but it does have high quality 15mm rings. Ring protectors, two pen loops, five card slots which are a mixture of top and side entry ones in the front cover. A zip pocket in the back pocket, also large gusseted pockets in the front and back pockets. So you can hold a lot of things in this one.

A pocket I have shared with you before is of unknown make, but it has small 11mm rings

Van der Spek Junior (Pocket) come with either 16 or 20mm Krause rings. Of course the Van der Spek Custom models can have all sorts of internal layouts. Including full back pockets, secretarial pockets, second pen loops etc etc the list is almost never ending.

Van der Spek also sell their Junior Touch Me organisers which is an 'off-the-shelf' model in a limited range of 5 colours, all of them come with 20 mm rings and a full width back pocket and a very good internal layout too.

Both the Gillio and Van der Spek use rings that are removable/replaceable. I'm often asked can the 15/16 mm rings be swapped for 20mm ones. Sadly the mounting points are different spacing, so the swap isn't very straight forward. The backing plate needs to be changed and that requires the leather of the organiser to be unstitched to replace it.

This is only an overview of what is available in Pocket size, there are of course a whole lot more models and makes out there.

Do you use pocket size on a regular basis or have you used it in the past?

16 August 2017

Last weekend saw the on-line launch event of the William Hannah A6 leather notebook/planner on the Facebook group using a live video feed.

David kindly offered to send me a sample to review, which I gladly accepted and it arrived in the post this last week.

The William Hannah A6 leather notebook was delivered in exactly the same style of gift box as the A5 (previously reviewed), the A6 box is shown here with a Philofaxy business card for size.

It opens in the same way as the A5 gift box to reveal the wrapped A6 leather notebook.

I have to say that the packaging and 'opening experience' (if such a thing exists!) is comparable to opening any Apple product with the detail that has gone in to the packaging and the presentation of the product.

If you wanted to give one of these notebooks as a gift, the recipient would be very impressed opening their gift.

Inside was a Bordeaux and Petrol Blue William Hannah A6 leather notebook.

It is nice to break out of my usual comfort zone of colours! See the website for all the colour combinations available.

The A6 notebook uses the same size 20 mm stainless steel discs as the A5 with the same spacing as well. There are just 6 discs fitted on the A6 compared to the 8 fitted in the A5. So all existing paper punches will work.

The stainless steel discs are finished to a high standard and the pages turn very smoothly.

Here are the two sizes together for comparison.

The William Hannah A6 notebook cover is made out of high quality Italian leather and the stitching is done to a high standard too.

Of course if you already own an A5 William Hannah notebook you can pop A6 pages in to the A5 without any problems because the discs are spaced the same distance apart.

I have experimented with putting A5 in to the A6, but that is still a 'work in progress' project !

Another comparison with the William Hannah A6 I did was to compare it with two slightly different size Van der Spek A6 ring bound organisers.

In the left hand column of the photograph below there is a Van der Spek Senior with 20 mm rings, this is the same size as the discs in the William Hannah, so as you can see they are very close in size.

The Van der Spek is designed for paper 95mm x 140mm so slightly smaller than A6, A6 pages work in that Van der Spek if you use top tabs on dividers. Where as the William Hannah has a more compact arrangement with its disc system and normal A6 paper.

The right hand column is another Van der Spek Senior, but this time fitted with 25mm size rings and it is the full size suitable for A6 size paper. As you can see it is noticeably wider than the William Hannah A6 notebook, and thicker too.

The William Hannah A6 is quite a compact A6, if that makes sense! It measures 160mm high by 125mm wide. The 20mm Van der Spek Senior measures 176mm high by 145mm including the clasp.

The discs are threaded on to a stainless steel rod which is sewn in to the back of the leather cover in the same way as the ones are in the A5 model.

This gives the notebook very good rigidity and stability which is normally an issue for disc system binders.

With sufficient overhang and the quality of the Italian leather cover, this will protect the paper very well and your pages will not come to any harm in normal daily use.

There are a full set of A6 inserts available for the new model. They include diary pages as well as a variety of lined, dot grid, grid, to-do lists etc.

There are also a small selection of accessories available for the A6 including colourful dividers and a matching leather and elastic pen loop, the pen loop fits in the same way as it does on the A5 model. I have already ordered a pen loop and some dividers for the A6!.

The William Hannah A6 Notebook is available in ten colour combinations 'off-the-shelf' these have been chosen to appeal to the majority of peoples tastes.

In addition, like the A5 you can order an A6 notebook in a number of bespoke colour combinations of exterior leather, interior suede and the colour of the thread both inside and outside.

Overall I am very impressed with the William Hannah A6 notebook, it satisfies many points for me, being flexible and compact as well as high quality and able to tuck in to a small bag without taking up too much space. I have always liked the proportions of A6 page size so it will be great to use it again as a notebook.

Thank you to David Round at William Hannah Leather Notebooks for providing me with the review sample.

14 August 2017

Back in the 1980s, the range of available Filofax leaves was much wider than today, and there were four sizes of personal leaves:

Single

6¾” x 3¾”

171mm x 95mm

Double

6¾” x 7⅛”

171mm x 181mm

Treble

6¾” x 10½”

171mm x 267mm

Quadruple

6¾” x 13¾”

or 6¾” x 13½”

171mm x 350mm

or 171mm x 343mm

The three wider sizes were all designed to fold down to single size, so they could be carried in a normal personal binder.

These leaves pre-dated metric measures, and the widths in inches would have reflected the true sizes, while the metric dimensions shown were converted and evidently rounded up to the nearest whole mm. (Quad width of 13¾” actually converts closer to 349mm.)

Two widths for quadruple seem to have existed, although only one was shown in any given catalogue. The duality of size is likely to have arisen from how the leaves were folded, as discussed below. (The catalogues I’ve seen showing the smaller of the quad widths also incorrectly state a metric equivalent of 330mm rather than 343mm.)

From mid-1986, the metric widths seem to have been given in the catalogues with further rounding to the nearest 5mm, making double width come out as 180mm and treble as 265mm. I have also seen earlier treble Lefax leaves of 265mm, so there are certainly some nuances to the sizing!

Double leaves:

Treble leaves:

Quadruple leaves:

Note the variation in the direction of folding. The left-hand variant would allow a slightly wider fourth segment, which I suspect is the reason why two different quad widths were quoted.

I have written previously about the original Deskfax format that used double width personal leaves. This was a convenient way to store and use the double size unfolded. Evidence from leaves bearing the associated “DF” marking suggests that this format was introduced in late 1984, rather than 1985/6 as I’d previously believed.

Looking further back in time, both Lefax and Filofax made simple (non-leather) binders that would hold each of the different sizes unfolded.

As an experiment I decided to recreate these, at least in spirit. I used the ring insert out of a modern Temperley Ikat Filofax and made front and rear covers in each of the sizes by trimming plastic sheets. Here are some photos of the end results.

Components for treble-sized binder:

Double-sized binder:

Quadruple-sized binder:

The full set of elements used in the experiment:

Today there are still some fold-out inserts for year planners and the like, but the wider range of plain, lined, quadrille, cash, graph etc. are long discontinued. It’s not too hard to make your own though.

Thank you Max, very useful for people wanting extra page space but not a bigger organiser!

13 August 2017

I rediscovered this photograph from a few weeks ago. It is a snap shot in time of what my daily/weekly planning tools look like that I'm generally using these days.

Top left is my A5 reference organiser, showing some local maps salvaged from an old road atlas! I also keep a lot of other information pages in this organiser such as:

Address/Contacts pages

Information pages on various topics

Notes pages

Spare pages

Maps

Instruction sheets

I don't carry this A5 around with me, as it is generally too heavy and bulky, but it sits on my desk closed and to hand all the time. I transfer pages from it to my other A5 as and when I need them.

Top Right is my A5 planning organiser. This only contains my 12 month week on two page planner using the Philofaxy Enhanced Time Manager insert and a Month on One Page blog planner, with a few notes pages between these two planners. Extra pages are added to this organiser as required.

Some weeks are busy like the one shown, but most weeks I don't have that many appointments, my main need is to remind myself of various tasks to do that week. I use the reminders app on my Mac/iPhone for the routine daily/weekly reminders so as to not clog up my pages with those.

This A5 does get carried around, it is quite light, and I keep all my daily/weekly requirements in it and other bits of paper such as prescriptions and official cards and paperwork.

Bottom Left is my Van der Spek Nomad Travellers Notebook I have two of these, but this one is dedicated to the podcast (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Plannerverse) I use it to put together notes for each episode or as shown future episodes, sometimes like this printed paper stuck in to the notebook. I have another Nomad which has three notebooks in it which I use for other projects. I find using notebooks for dedicated projects very productive because you can just sit down somewhere and quietly concentrate on that particular project.

Bottom Right is my Quo Vadis Daily 21 diary/agenda that I use as a journal, it has lovely fountain pen friendly paper. I'm not a heavy journalling person, sometimes it's just key things I've done that day. I ignore the times on the page and just use it as a dated lined page. I've used this type for the last 4 years, it is very good, and I can just archive the whole book in December and start a new one on 1st January.

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11 August 2017

For more than a decade I have struggled with the portability vs page size dilemma: in order to have enough writing space each day/ week, I need to use a large planner which is big and heavy to carry around. Repeatedly I tried to use a smaller, more portable planner, without success.

Recently I decided to just embrace my big planner, and carry it around no matter what. I belong to several planner groups on Facebook, and was curious to know how many people who use a very large planner carry it around, or leave it on their desk.

I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that lots of large-planner users carry it with them! Most use a tote bag, some use a backpack or cross-body bag.

I normally use a leather cross-body bag, which itself is fairly heavy and has a smallish opening, which makes it difficult to get my planner in and out of. So very recently I bought a cloth tote bag that weighs next to nothing and has a large open top with an easy magnet closure, so it's easy to carry my planner everywhere and get it in and out of my bag quickly.

Do you carry your large (A5 Filofax/ Classic size Franklin Covey, or possibly even larger!) planner with you? What type of bag do you use?

And as always on Friday, feel free to ask and/ or discuss anything ring-binder related!

10 August 2017

Following on from 'One Book July' in this episode we discussed the issues, implications and challenges about staying in one size of planner all the time.

If you have ideas for future episodes please send them to steve at philofaxy dot com

Show Notes (timings approximate)
00:00 - Introduction
01:00 - The topic that will not go away
02:30 - Why?
04:00 - Having multiple planners
04:30 - Advantages of staying in the one size
05:15 - Rewriting the year after changing sizes?
06:15 - History has taught Steve how many changes he has been through
08:00 - The right size then the right layout and type of planner
09:00 - Weighing up the pros and cons of different planner types
10:00 - What size suits you needs best
12:00 - One size but does this mean only one planner?
13:30 - Splitting one size in to more than one planner to lighten your load
18:00 - Personal size, is it the perfect size
20:00 - Going big or small, how this influences your page layouts
24:00 - Hybrid, same size but different formats
25:00 - Life changes that cause issues with the size of planner you are using
27:30 - How do you pick your size